On taking on the mobilized capitalist class in elections: An interview with Noam Chomsky

In this interview at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, I sat down with Laureate Professor Noam Chomsky to discuss electoral politics, the prospects for progressives in upcoming primaries, and the difficulties candidates face with their internal party apparatus, the media and big money challengers, as well as navigating complicated foreign policies and positions. Chomsky weighs in on the continued aftershocks of the Sanders campaign as well as the problematic issue of BDS and how progressives and third parties can reorganize and repurpose forward thinking stances to refocus on future elections.

Daniel Falcone: The “blue wave” looked like an opportunity to take the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and to coalesce around socialists and Greens. Much to the corporate media’s delight, the progressives recently hit some setbacks and obstacles in primaries, although I wanted to ask you about social democratic or New Deal styled candidates popping up in forthcoming elections, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Julia Salazar in New York City, as well as a host of other progressives like Jasmine Robinson and Zephyr Teachout who also come to mind for me personally. Do you see a potential long term eclipse, of any sort, of donor class-oriented politics with these candidates especially if third parties join in endorsing the platforms or similar platforms and vice versa?

Noam Chomsky: That’s a real battle. I mean, we’re not dealing with a small question. This is practically all of American political history. This goes way back as you may recall to Mark Hanna, who was the great campaign organizer for the late nineteenth century. In 1895 he was asked, “What are the most important things for a political campaign?” He said, “There are two things. The first one is money, and I’ve forgotten what the second was.” That was 1895. So, this is deeply entrenched. You’ve seen Tom Ferguson’s work on it. It’s not just the White House; it’s also Congress. In fact, I don’t know if you saw Tom’s study of the 2016 election, a very important study, which shows and details that in the last couple of weeks of the campaign the Republican establishment, who didn’t like Trump, realized that there could be a big Democratic wave — which they certainly didn’t want.

In the last couple weeks of the campaign, there was a huge flood of money both for President and Congress, and he said if you compared it with voting attitudes, as usual [they] changed along[side] the campaign funding of the negative ads. And, in fact, that’s what swung both the congressional and the White House election. It wasn’t just Trump, it was also Congress. So, it’s another triumph of campaign spending. This is 2016, and [not far off from 1895].

The amazing thing about 2016 was the Sanders campaign. It’s the first time in American history that a candidate probably could have won, if it hadn’t been for party managers who kept him out, with no funding from the corporate sector, and no funding from the wealthy, and no media support. So, it’s a real breakthrough, but to carry out [a potential eclipse of the donor class] moving forward is going to be really hard because there’s also going to be a mobilized effort on the part of the entire capitalist class, Republican and Democrat, to prevent that from happening. In fact, if Sanders had run I think he would have been slaughtered by the propaganda, and it would have been massive propaganda about this Jewish, atheist, communist that wants to bring immigrants in to kill everybody.

It’s kind of like what you see with Jeremy Corbyn. I mean, both the Tories and the Labour Party — the Labour Parliamentarians, the Blair guys, the media, like The Guardian— they’re all trying to destroy him. These latest attacks on him for anti-Semitism are just insane, but they’ll do anything to try to destroy his chances because he’s trying to create a political party in which people actually participate; not just the rich and powerful guys who tell you what to do, and that’s intolerable. So, I think maybe it’s going to be a real fight.

Daniel Falcone: I read your commentary regarding progressives and Israel and found it very interesting, where you point out the once absolute darling of progressive liberal America, Israel, is now shifting its support to right wing regimes, losing the Democratic Party. Does this create a possibility for social democrats and their superficial support of something like BDS to move beyond a fashionable vanity project into a position of real advocacy for Palestinians in your view? And from that starting point, is it possible that even mainstream Democrats can move closer to embracing actual policies that show authentic concerns for Palestinian rights, as all groups seem to move further on the left on the issue?

Noam Chomsky: It’s not just the left. Take the Presbyterian Church; that’s not on the left. They took a very strong stand on a boycott on the divestment – there are no sanctions. It’s really B.D., not BDS, but they did it the way it’s effective. They concentrated on the occupied territories and on U.S. multinationals participating in the occupied territories. The BDS movement just can’t think. They’re acting in a way which undermines their own goals. They’re insisting on focusing on Israel, you know — academic boycotts, cultural boycotts. You can make an argument for it, but it’s not going to work.

That barely even happened in South Africa. Every time [BDS does these things] it leads to a backlash, which is stronger than the effort. And it just diverts attention away from the Palestinians to irrelevant issues, like academic freedom. You have to start debating about that. I mean, that’s not the problem. But the Presbyterian Church had the right idea, and that’s not the left after all. It’s one of the biggest churches in the country. It is conservative. But if the BDS movement had any sense, they’d be following that policy and they’d be doing things that they’re not doing.

This entry was posted
on Thursday, August 16th, 2018 at 00:05 and is filed under Uncategorized.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.